"Oh hang it," he exclaimed--in no logical connection with what he had
been relating to me. Nevertheless the exclamation was intelligible
enough.
However at first there were, he admitted, no untoward complications, no
embarrassing consequences. To a telegram in guarded terms dispatched to
de Barral no answer was received for more than twenty-four hours. This
certainly caused the Fynes some anxiety. When the answer arrived late on
the evening of next day it was in the shape of an elderly man. An
unexpected sort of man. Fyne explained to me with precision that he
evidently belonged to what is most respectable in the lower middle
classes. He was calm and slow in his speech. He was wearing a frock-
coat, had grey whiskers meeting under his chin, and declared on entering
that Mr. de Barral was his cousin. He hastened to add that he had not
seen his cousin for many years, while he looked upon Fyne (who received
him alone) with so much distrust that Fyne felt hurt (the person actually
refusing at first the chair offered to him) and retorted tartly that he,
for his part, had never seen Mr. de Barral, in his life, and that,
since the visitor did not want to sit down, he, Fyne, begged him to state
his business as shortly as possible. The man in black sat down then with
a faint superior smile.
He had come for the girl. His cousin had asked him in a note delivered
by a messenger to go to Brighton at once and take "his girl" over from a
gentleman named Fyne and give her house-room for a time in his family.
And there he was. His business had not allowed him to come sooner. His
business was the manufacture on a large scale of cardboard boxes. He had
two grown-up girls of his own. He had consulted his wife and so that was
all right. The girl would get a welcome in his home. His home most
likely was not what she had been used to but, etc. etc.
All the time Fyne felt subtly in that man's manner a derisive disapproval
of everything that was not lower middle class, a profound respect for
money, a mean sort of contempt for speculators that fail, and a conceited
satisfaction with his own respectable vulgarity.
With Mrs. Fyne the manner of the obscure cousin of de Barral was but
little less offensive. He looked at her rather slyly but her cold,
decided demeanour impressed him. Mrs. Fyne on her side was simply
appalled by the personage, but did not show it outwardly. Not even when
the man remarked with false simplicity that Florrie--her name was Florrie
wasn't it? would probably miss at first all her grand friends. And when
he was informed that the girl was in bed, not feeling well at all he
showed an unsympathetic alarm. She wasn't an invalid was she? No. What
was the matter with her then?